More than 250 injured as riot police use tear gas and rubber bullets on migrants at Greece-Macedonia border

Greece has condemned the use of force against migrants as "dangerous and deplorable" after Macedonian police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to deter hundreds of refugees from crossing the Greek side of the border.

The police fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and a water cannon at around 500 migrants, including children, injuring more than 250, as they tried to scale a border fence at Idomeni in northern Greece in the latest violence to erupt in Europe's migrant crisis.

"The indiscriminate use of chemicals, rubber bullets and stun grenades against vulnerable populations, and particularly without reasons for such force, is a dangerous and deplorable act," George Kyritsis, a spokesman for migration coordination in the Greek government, said in an unusually strong statement.

A migrant flees from tear gas smoke Credit:
STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS

Macedonian sources initially denied police took action but later said Macedonian police only fired tear gas after migrants stormed the border fence on Sunday.

Clashes continued into the afternoon at the makeshift camp which houses over 11,000 stranded migrants. Volunteer doctors were treating many people who were not involved in the clashes for respiratory problems.

In late Feburary, Macedonian police fired tear gas on some 300 migrants after they broke through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway line between the two countries, prompting the European Union to voice "concern" about heavy-handedness.

A woman and her child cry after being hit with tear gas at the Idomeni camp Credit:
BULENT KILIC/AFP

Sunday's incident came a day after five people drowned off the Greek island of Samos, the first deaths in the Aegean Sea since a controversial EU-Turkey deal to stem the flow of illegal migrants and send them back to Turkey if they do not meet European Union criteria took effect.

Efforts by the Greek authorities to persuade migrants to leave Idomeni and move to nearby reception centres have been unsuccessful. The EU continues to face the biggest refugee crisis since 1945.

A man calls to other refugees and migrants to walk through the torn down wire fencing along the border into Macedonia during the clashesCredit:
BULENT KILIC/AFP

More than one million asylum seekers entered Europe in 2015, and more than 135,000 since the beginning of 2016.

Most of them are from Syria, where a civil war has displaced 12 million since 2011, according to UN figures. Germany received the highest number of new asylum applications in 2015, with more than 476,000.